Salt Dough Santa Handprint Decoration

If you’re like me then you may have tons of home-made christmas decorations in the loft that have been made by the children at home or in their classroom at school, I have paper ones, felt ones and card ones but i do not have any salt dough ones. I don’t like to throw any of the decorations that the boys bring home as most of the time they have a photograph of them on it, a piece of writing or a handprint. Every year along with the shop bough decorations out come the home-made ones too, I love looking back and remembering when they brought them home with a big smile on their face, proudly showing me what they have made.

I have never used salt dough before (we are big fans of play dough) so after scrolling through the internet i found a recipe from Red Ted Art, she has a page set up of 30+ salt dough crafts for christmas.

RECIPE:

2 cups of flour

1 cup of salt

1 cup of water

I added glitter into my dough, but it’s not needed

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl, if you want to add colouring add it into the water as you mix it into the flour and salt. Add the water a little at a time as you may not need it all.

Now you are ready to create some masterpieces!

The boys made many tree decorations but the one that we are going to share today is the hand print santa. I found out about this idea whilst roaming through the internet and thought that it was really cute and would make lovely gift ideas to the Grandparents/family

Roll out your dough to about 0.5 mm thick

Make sure that is big enough to place your hand onto

Press your hand firmly down onto the dough, so that there is a clear hand impression

Cut around the hand print, leaving a 0.5mm border all the way round

Make a hole at the bottom of the hand so that you can thread through some cotton once its hardened

Place into an oven to bake for about 1-2 hours on a low heat, 100 farenheit. Keep checking on the decorations, making sure they don’t burn.

Take out of the oven and leave to cool.

Once cooled, your santa is now ready to paint

Paint the whole of the decoration with white paint, leave to dry. Use some good quality paint as i found using the cheaper option paint, it flaked on the dough.

Paint the face pink

Using a black marker pen, draw in the outline of the santa hat and face, Write down the year and name of the child’s hand print